Fastbrick Robotics robot building a home - GIF

[ToolTalkBot]

Fastbrick Robotics robot building a home.




Previously:

Friendly Robotics Robomow promotional vehicle - photo and video
Dubai robotic Cybertruck police - GIF
NASA Modular Robotic Vehicle - video
Robotic car parking dollies - GIF
Robotic chassis casting machine - GIF
Robotic gas station in China - GIF

[metric_taper]

So it would be faster to just stack these up by hand, as I don't see any mortar in those joints. That's a pricey machine that just stacks blocks.
So looks like they are depending on the quality of original concrete block manufacture that has perfect size after manufacture. Besides adhesion of the blocks, and closing air gaps, that mortar makes up for size tolerance issues.
And just stack them up, fill the cores with concrete, every 4 feet a rebar, mostly hurricane resistant base. The roof is another problem.

[BuffaloJohn]

So it would be faster to just stack these up by hand, as I don't see any mortar in those joints.

There is an adhesive on the underside of the block before it is placed. You can't see the underside, but you can see evidence of the adhesive on the lower courses - looking at the start of the video and also at the 1:30 mark.

[Floradawg]

Many years ago I read about a product called Shurwall, (spl.?) in which the blocks are stacked dry and this mix is troweled onto both sides of the wall. It was a fiberglass reinforced mortar. It was claimed that the resulting wall would be stronger than conventional types. For whatever reasons it apparently didn't make the cut.

[nova_robotics]

I see these things all the time and it always makes me scratch my head. I think conventional CMUs are designed for human hands. I don't think it's something that's a good target for automation. It seems like if a company wants to be successful at automating block wall construction they should start be redesigning the blocks so that they're able to be machine assembled, rather than trying to make a machine assemble conventional blocks.

[BuffaloJohn]

It seems like if a company wants to be successful at automating block wall construction they should start be redesigning the blocks so that they're able to be machine assembled, rather than trying to make a machine assemble conventional blocks.

Your point is quite logical, but there is another consideration - using existing materials means you don't need to reinvent the manufacture of such materials.

I used to work for a company that wanted to always use "off the shelf" components to make products - generally a sound idea - custom products can be expensive in small quantities, more consumers of a product - the greater a chance it will march down the cost curve. The problem came when they wanted a feature that "nobody" else seemed to want - thus it was essentially unobtainium.

It is quite likely that this machine can handle different sizes of rectangular blocks as well as handle different building plans. That means the machine can move site to site and more quickly construct. The need to source specific building components at all locations might be a such high hurdle to overcome that the rest of the technology won't be adopted.

Others have already figured out how to make the blocks well - if the building technology takes off, new block sizes and shapes can be adapted to later...

[odd one]

I don't see the cost savings. Sadly, labor for this type of work is not that expensive and it looks like they still have someone there squaring up the wall and scraping or pointing up the gaps. Now you not only have to have room for this large machine on a job site, but you also have the rental of the forklift to feed it. I can only assume that the machine can place block faster than in this video, 2 blocks in 1.5 minutes would get most guys fired or retrained.
The only advantage I could see is as the walls gets taller, you would not necessarily need to set up and tear down scaffolding, but they appear to still need to have someone QC and scrape/point up the wall....so maybe not.